So the last week of July is the week that the Democratic National Committee is going to have a big shindig for John Kerry at the Fleet Center. My poor little town is going to be catastrophically shut down that week, I'm afraid. Now why aren't they doing this over by the airport or in Southie?
It's hard to underestimate how stupid it was to put something that would need such heavy security in the Fleet Center to begin with. This is a building that abuts an eight-lane underground traffic artery (Interstate 93), two of the city's four light rail lines (the T's Green and Orange lines), and sits atop an Amtrak commuter rail hub that serves half of the suburbs, stretching west to Worcester and north to New Hampshire. Across the street from the Fleet Center are restaurants, sports bars, small software companies, and shops, each on one of many minor streets. These are pretty much all going to need to be closed.
It is, of course, apparently too late to do anything about it, like move the convention to some more logical part of Boston, or just stop bothering to have conventions since they're little more than really expensive dog and pony shows anyway. It's good to be able to telecommute.
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Must...resist...the urge to link to Girls Are Pretty again. Damn! I did it. Okay, I won't do it again. I promise.
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Cursor (in the sidebar) points us to an account (scroll halfway down) of how Deborah Norville, considered a journalist for some reason, stole a story from The Onion (also in the sidebar), presented it as real news, and, of course, didn't bother to mention where she'd plagiarized the story from.
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Two Timeses' and two Posts' predictable coverage of the 9/11 commission hearings.
"...It could be mere coincidence the majority of reporters whose work we examined chose approaches that corresponded to the leanings of their own newspaper's editorial page. But we doubt it."
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Something else to put on the now prohibitively long recreational reading list: Free Culture, by Larry Lessig.
All creative works—books, movies, records, software, and so on—are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible—technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we’ve forgotten?"Available (mostly) free online, partly to demonstrate the by now reasonably well-documented fact that this increases sales of the physical book.
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More hearings.
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How high can high heels go? The answer, alas, is a (not very) complicated mathematical expression that doesn't render well in HTML.
Laura Grant, a physicist from Liverpool University welcomes the Institute's new formula commenting, "many of my physicist colleagues have no trouble understanding quantum mechanics but can't figure out how women can wear high heels. Now I can explain to them how I minimise the probability of tripping up".Note that only in the United States among non-ass-backwards countries are people ever surprised to note that women can be physicists, too. Math is hard! (scroll to 1994 on that last link.)
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I'm saving off copies of the Times' transcript of the September 11th commission hearings so that when someone asks about the text of the testimony, you can check it yourself. It'll be nice to have when the transcript vanishes behind the paywall in a week. It's also easier than trying to figure out what's going on by listening to NPR, which is in the middle of one of the most poorly-timed pledge drives of all time, or watching TV, which is itself an informationless pledge drive.
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Okay, now I'm totally going to ignore any leading questions (eyebrows probably raised, huh?) about why American Idol is on my television—hint: it involves my lovely wife—but one of the judges on that most wretched of all possible shows just denigraded a performer by saying, "That was a sellout." Think about that for a minute. Well, damn. I can't really add anything to that. I suppose I can now begin to empathize with Tom Tomorrow, who complained just the other day (in a different context) that "...it's awfully hard to satirize people who keep outdoing your best efforts."
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PressThink: Die, Strategy News. "It's a bankrupt form. It serves no clear purpose. There is no civic rationale for it."
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Lib has a mission statement: "This site aims to brighten your day, if not with the wonderful text, then with a reminder that Lib is only a website away."
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Following up the traffic monitoring post below, wouldn't it have been fun to go to this talk about LA's Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control Center. "ATSAC is located four levels below city hall in a cold-war era complex complete with heavy swinging steel doors ('Our biggest worry is getting trapped down there if something goes wrong')."
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Three times in the last two weeks people have offered me a copy of a CD (twice) or video (once) that they had bought, but offered the caveat that they'd understand if I had a moral problem with copying stuff. Even if it were illegal I'd have no moral problem, of course, and the reasons are nicely laid out in the 1984 US Supreme Court decision that explicitly states that copying copyrighted stuff for personal use is "fair use," and totally legal. The USSC upheld this part that I especially like:
Even when an entire copyrighted work was recorded, [p.426] the District Court regarded the copying as fair use "because there is no accompanying reduction in the market for 'plaintiff's original work.'"Just so you know.
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Super good traffic monitoring of the sort that Boston needs. What a great public service! How hard can this be to set up? (Yes, I know it wouldn't be free.) Our local traffic status information sources kind of suck. Update: Lee points us to a partial (and growing, hopefully) traffic map of Boston. Thanks, Lee!
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Dad is posting pictures of what it's like when you want it to snow.
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A kid from Barnet, a kid from Essex Junction, and Tom Brennan all just showed up in quick succession on national television. They're ahead of UConn by three halfway through the first half. Are you kidding me? This looks like it might actually be close!
Update: Now the Cats are taking all these horrible outside shots already down ten near the end of the first half, so this is probably the beginning of the end.
Update: CBS has decided to show Princeton vs. Texas, which does us no good. I'm "watching" the game here.
Update: So, I must say, the only thing worse than watching your team slowly lose is not watching them lose because the largest CBS affiliate in New England has somehow decided not to concentrate on the game between the State universities of two New England states, preferring instead an only marginally closer game between schools from New Jersey and Texas, both of which are much further away from Boston than either Connecticut or Vermont. 70-53. Alas.
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I'd like to think that I'd be going to see G. Love and Special Sauce tonight if it weren't for family commitments, but I probably would have missed this one anyway. Ah well. Better to hang out with the baby while listening to one of the first two G. Love albums (at a volume that's reasonable for a baby, of course). My birthday's coming in a few months, you know...
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First-hand account (with pictures!) of the DARPA Grand Challenge, in which DOD wants driverless, autonomous (not remote controlled) vehicles to cross 200 miles or so of desert, with obstacles. Like the future scenes from the beginning of Terminator. Lemonodor has a good amount of coverage; the guy just drove out to Barstow and had a look.
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So I had always thought that this was an urban legend told by high school chemistry students, but it turns out that there really was a kid who won a science fair in 1997 (although I thought I'd heard about this when I was in high school—maybe it was just an urban legend back then) by describing the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide, a chemical whose molecules are each composed of two hydrogens and one oxygen—hmmm... I mention this because some clowns on the city council (!) in Orange County, California just recently got taken in by this and were ready to try to ban foam cups because they're manufactured using the dread substance. Oh man. Ars has the poop.
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Raving Lunatic Obviously Took Some Advanced Physics. " 'Where's my cheese? Don't take my rowboat! Got no room!' the lunatic screamed from his regular spot near the Campus Drive bus stop. 'I need space! Gimme space! Infinite dimensional separable Hilbert space!' "
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Let's draw robots! A page full of drawings of robots, some excellent, that does nothing to dispel any stereotypes about computer geeks who play with the internet a lot.
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The baby, too tired to know that she needs to go to sleep, is crying pathetically. It's best if you don't hear.
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Textism is such a pretty site that I almost feel like pointing to it for that reason alone, but it also presents a totally fascinating graphical history of the drawing and printing of Roman characters: The Evolution of Writing—like Fonts Through the Ages (in Europe), or something. It's great fun.
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Remember to root for the good guys Thursday. Note that 15 seeds beat 2 seeds with some regularity; remember Seton Hall? (UConn fans among you can stop reading this space until Friday.)
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Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass: This is even funny if you haven't written and/or graded one or two these things, even for the non-physicists among you. Back when I got stuff like this to grade I'd laugh a lot, show all my coworkers, and then give the student a really low score; most of my favorite students got C's and D's. Found here.
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We drove over to Cambridge to look at the sponge dorm, noted below. It looks reasonable as a piece of public sculpture (think park art), but pity the poor bastards who actually have to live in the place, although I'm sure, this being MIT, that there are at least a few nerdy kids there who greatly enjoy living in a building that looks like a rectangular fractal. (Even aside from the dorm, it's not the prettiest part of Cambridge.) This picture was taken standing up, so by looking at the bottom of the building for where the windows appear to form a line pointing right at the camera you can get some sense of scale; I think the building only has six or seven floors. The baby was unfazed, having fallen asleep on the way over. Then the three of us went to get Mexican in Harvard Square, which was wonderful.
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I've been playing with the HTML layout of this space and now the spacing is all messed up. I promise it will get better soon. [Update: let me know if it's not better now.]
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I had totally forgotten about the Eyesore of the Month, where ill-conceived architecture is mercilessly observed. This month gives us townhouses that prompt:
The upper stories are applique Georgian, meant to signify "historic architecture here!" The real message emanating from all this investment and effort is "no real future here." What the scene signifies is the tragic resignation of ordinary Americans to cheap falsehood in the service of an entropic economy.
February gave us a particularly tragic view of the sterile new MIT art-dorm that its residents hate, and which I've still never seen. Maybe something to visit today. Hopefully it won't scare the baby. [Update above.]
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Anecdotes from a girl who lives in New York and got Chris Rock's old cell phone number randomly assigned to her.
Two days later, I was upstate, cruising around a Wal-Mart parking lot looking for a space (thrilling, I know), when my cell phone rang. A number I didn't recognize appeared on the Caller ID.
LAURA: Hello?
CALLER: Is Chris there?
LAURA: [Puzzled, with curiosity immediately piqued] Uh, Chris... who?
CALLER: Chris Rock.
LAURA: [Incredulously] Chris Rock!!? As in Chris Rock? As in, the Chris Rock?
CALLER: [Seemingly unfazed] Yeah, the Chris Rock.
LAURA: That is so funny! You're the second person who's called asking for Chris Rock! I just got this new cell phone, and this is the number they gave me....
CALLER: [Laughs] Well, you'd better change your number, because I'm sure that this is Chris Rock's number... Oh, wait... now I remember Chris saying something about getting a new cell phone number....
Watch her figure out what to do with calls from Ken Burns, Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson's assistant, and more. Found here, as has lately been this space's custom.
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In what universe is it possible for me not to link to the masturbation euphemism generator?
- Having an arm-wrestle with the elephant's trunk
- Five-knuckle-shuffle on the love rifle
- Unsheathing the main drain
- Flaying the bald guy 'til he pukes
- Shaking coconuts from the stump
- Pounding the witness
- Getting to know your one-eyed vessel
- Punchin' old beater
- Fisting your hands with your beauty bar
- Taking your turn at the paddle
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Voter turnout exceeds 100% in California precincts with e-voting machines. Astonishingly, the lazy goddamned reporters state that, "Wide margins in most races seem likely to spare the county the need for a costly revote," and then go on to report in the same article that the voting machines' manufacturer "...said it would be impossible to identify which voters cast ballots in the wrong precincts because of steps the company had taken to ensure voter secrecy. For this reason, an exact account of miscast ballots is impossible." The National Review gets it, and observes, "Sometimes the sky really is falling." Slashdot has more. Danger, Will Robinson!
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This space is kind of unnerved to have lightly mentioned hockey fights so soon before noticing that a guy on the Avalanche got his neck broken yesterday by a Canucks goon.
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Howard Stern, having been suspended by Clear Channel, whom he apparently suspects did so at the White House's behest, is suddenly getting all political, which is pretty cool because, you know, what can They do? Smear him? Dig up some sex scandal? I don't even care if he's wrong (although I'd still like to think he is). This reminds me of when Bill Clinton trotted out the pornographer Larry Flynt to help him through a stupid, self-inflicted political crisis. It's fun to watch what happens when political players of any persuasion find themselves, oops, mired in stupid sexuality or association with low talk show hosts or some other avoidable, non-policy distraction. Like watching hockey for the fights. If only I could stand listening to Stern's show for more than twenty seconds at a time before getting bored or annoyed and changing the channel I might even listen in...
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More Get Your War On, St. Augustine Bear, and Filing Technique. David Rees has apparently decided to do everything in parallel so that no single story develops too quickly. Heh heh.
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A superb graphic. It's so excellent that the usual Krugman tone that accompanies it seems totally out of place. One wishes, of course, that more data were shown to the left, and that earlier job growth forecasts, population growth, and workforce size were plotted as well, but this space will take what interesting plots it can get.
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This cute baby's recent trip to southwest Florida involved her first plane trip (not pictured, for obvious reasons) and her first long visits to the beach. Several of you will be particularly encouraged to learn that she's a pretty good flier (especially when the plane's seatbacks contain touchscreen televisions to wipe drool all over), and this space is delighted to report that she loves the water. These things will make all of our lives much easier.
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Slashdot points us to an actual computer scientist's experience officiating an actual election using paperless, black box e-voting machines.
My biggest fear is that super Tuesday will be viewed as a big success. By all accounts, everyone at my precinct felt that way. The more e-voting is viewed as successful, the more it will be adopted, and the greater the risk when someone decides to actually exploit the weaknesses of these systems.And not just any computer scientist...
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Mary Hooper is now the Mayor of Montpelier. Excellent!
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Without The Onion what would we do? You Are The Most Beautiful Woman In The World...: "I have never seen a woman with such long, lustrous hair and such stunning eyes naked in person. I know deep in my heart that you possess the greatest beauty I could ever hope to find in a person willing to have sex with me." (Technical note: looks like theonion.com is about to start expiring all their links after a week, which kind of sucks.)
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PressThink at Columbia New York University [Oh man, sorry about that.] shows us, among many other things, how The News gets to be so infuriatingly bad. It starts off by decreeing that,
"Today we say media instead of "the press." But it's a mistake. The press has become the ghost of democracy in the media machine, and we need to keep it alive.This kind of navel gazing is normally super annoying, but it's kind of critical to one's ability to deal with any modern presentation of the news. Hopefully this marks the start of this space's drift from ranting about annoying politics to ranting about sloppy thinking. The latter is just way more rewarding to hack away at.
So, long essays about things this space has never even bothered to think about before. PressThink is being added to the sidebar for your convenience.
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I should have noticed Oh My News much, much earlier. News composed by non-journalists, fact-checked by presumably responsible people. I totally want to build one of these. You should read the Harvard kaffeeklatsch's take on it.
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Click on the picture at right, and see the full extent of quite how just plain old unrelated the numbers are to the headline. Hint: the red checkbox means that they think Dean won the primary with 0% of the precincts reporting. Kind of scary.
On the other hand, they're claiming he won by 2:1. Smart people, Vermonters.
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Killington
So the geniuses in the town of Killington, VT (maps 26c and 26d, here) have decided (by a vote of approximately 200 for to 100 against) to secede from Vermont and join New Hampshire. There's no way to sugarcoat the fact that this is retarded. Their beef is that the new statewide property tax that funds education more equitably than before is too hard on the town. Towns like Killington and Stowe and Essex Junction had feasted on an enormously inequitable statewide school funding formula for decades, and had property tax rates that were an order of magnitude less than in other, poorer towns. When the Vermont Supreme Court decided that it was unjust to force poor children to attend bad schools, the legislature stepped in to fix the problem. Nobody wanted to fund schools with a flat, statewide income tax, so they settled on a statewide property tax.
Having grown up going to such fancy, excellent schools, the residents of Killington must surely find it obvious that:
- Killington is inaccessible by ground transportation except through other points in Vermont. These roads are plowed by the State of Vermont. Killington is too hilly to be accessed by air except by helicopter. Alpine Vermonters don't like loud noises.
- The Town exists at the discretion of the State. If it came down to it, the legislature could simply dissolve Killington and make it part of some other, larger town nearby.
- People who live in Montpelier, where property taxes are nearly double what they are anywhere else in Vermont, aren't bitching so pathetically. It is conceivable, though hardly overwhelmingly likely, that voters in Killington could be shamed into lightening up and just enjoying living in one of the nicer parts of the nicest state in the country.
Killington residents want to join New Hampshire to have a more equitable education funding system. Well, they picked the wrong state for that.Furthermore, cooler heads appear to be prevailing:
New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson said he isn't sure exactly how the town can realistically switch states.Liberal, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving hippie freakshows, indeed.
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